


A Different Sort of Apocalypse

by soupypictures



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, M/M, Oakland Athletics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupypictures/pseuds/soupypictures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry Zito is released by the Giants, and Billy Beane is the only one who will take his call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Sort of Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> When Z signed his minor league contract with the A's last night, I said to myself, "I'VE WRITTEN THAT." It took me awhile to track down the file and it turns out that almost three years ago I thought it would end up even worse for him. Haha.
> 
> I toyed with editing out a few players who ended up off the team, but as I imagined this happening in 2013, not 2015, I would have to research what the status of the A's was that year and that's a lot of work for something I've actually abandoned! Haha.
> 
> Also, wow, my view of the A's as a franchise was hella depressing in April 2012. What a season that turned out to be!!!

To Barry Zito, Oakland is at once a shining beacon of hope and everything he was trying to avoid by signing with the team in black and orange.

No one wants to play for Oakland, and the few poor souls who end up there can’t wait to leave. The last batch of interested free agents were used in an ill-advised management ploy to force MLB’s hand in a stadium decision, but the joke’s on Billy Beane. Agents don’t like to be strung along, let alone used, and it’s easy to convince a player it’s in his best interests to sign anywhere other than Oakland.

But really, the joke’s on Barry, because Billy’s the only guy who would take his calls. Billy, who stayed in Oakland after flying out to Chicago to tease the Cubs. Billy, who let him walk once when everyone else was being traded away. Billy, who’s made one deal in his entire career due to sentimentality. So what’s this?

\---

Billy’s office looks and feels exactly the same. He hasn’t updated the furniture, it still smells like dip, and there’s not a clear space on any surface. There’s an uneasy tension in the air, the thought that no one understands just what makes Billy tick, no one knows what’s going to happen next. The trades of the past━Hudson, Mulder, Swisher, Haren, Harden, Street, Holliday, Ellis, and all the others━hover.

Billy waves him in and he takes a seat. They exchange mindless pleasantries, Barry asks after the twins, Billy studiously ignores the topic of Barry’s broken engagement, and then Billy is dropping a stack of papers on the desk in front of Barry. There’s the elephant in the room. Its name is not Stomper.

This contract is really his only choice. He plucks a pen from one of the cups on the desk in front of him. It’s a cheap plastic Bic. “You know,” he muses, eyes scanning over the printed words. “Last time I signed one of these they handed me this nice, heavy pen.”

Billy smiles. “Yeah, you’ll be lucky if that one works.”

Barry puts pen to paper; he feels like he’s about to sign a death certificate. This is the end of his career. This is the end of his life.

“Good to have you back, Barry,” Billy says, and Barry scratches his name on the paper before he has a chance to change his mind.

Barry laughs, dating the first signature.“Bullshit, you just like the idea of Sabean paying me an obscene amount of money to play for another team.” He’s joking, but not really. That’s his best guess as to why Billy called his new agent, and he’s desperate for an answer. He flips forward a few pages to the next flagged line.

“Got me.” It sounds like Billy’s joking too, but one can never be sure with him.

“Yeah, well, here’s to recapturing my youth.”

Billy scoffs. “That ain’t gonna happen.”

Barry shrugs, signs the last page, tosses the stack on Billy’s side of the desk.

“I gotta be honest with you.” Beane leans back in his chair, reaches for a cup of water. “Only reason I called Art was because Peacock’s gonna be out for awhile. Probably on the sixty day. Those kids and their elbows, man.”

Zito purses his lips, nods.

“You’re replacement level at very best, cheapest I could get on the market. I don’t have any parts to spare and we’ve run through every ready arm in the system. We’ve got enough starters, with Ross in the rotation, you’re the sixth starter, more likely longman.”

Billy is trying to temper his expectations, which is somewhat considerate, but this is nothing Barry needs to hear right now. “That’s okay.” He’s shocked to find out he means it.

Beane raises an eyebrow. “Is it?” Zito starts to answer, but Beane waves his hand at him. “Nevermind, doesn’t fucking matter. Get outta here, you’re in the bullpen tonight. Thank God you stayed in shape.”

Just like that, Beane’s back to work, and Zito is an Oakland Athletics relief pitcher.

Regression.

\---

The room was crowded. Barry Zito let his eyes adjust to the fluorescent lighting and the men in the room. This wouldn’t be good.

The last time he’d been asked to sit down in a room with Boch, Rags, and Sabes, they’d told him he was injured. “Before we make a move, we have to talk to Barry,” was the line he was hearing before he stepped into that windowless closet of a room. But that’s the sort of news you expect to get from a trainer, your own body singing at you in pain. You feel it in the way you come down on the mound, or swing ineffectually at a major league fastball. You see it in the positive MRI results (only after the doctor points it out and shows you a healthy foot) and you feel it in the way your life is fuzzy around the edges because of the new prescription you’ve got, the good stuff, not having to pinch it from your DL’d teammates anymore. You see it in your name on the label in stark black and white with warnings and side effects and everything that takes the feeling of uselessness and sets it back a few paces, trailing you, no longer right there by your side.

(He was mildly concerned about how one season of injuries and the resulting issues had affected him, wondered how anyone could deal with this on the regular.)

He’d had four starts this April. That’s a typical April for him: abysmal. He wondered what they could possibly be telling him was broken. It’s possible he’d failed a psychological test, but that shit happens all the time.

Right?

\---

He decides that this time around, he’ll get a place in the East Bay. He’ll save money on tolls (he’ll pretend he has to worry about money) and maybe help the environment, too. Plus, he’s got to distance himself from his home.

All at once, he’s irate.

“Fucking Sabean,” he hisses, “Fuck that guy for taking it from me.”

\---

So the room, it was crowded.

“Our shared road together has come to an end,” said Sabean, and Zito was 100% lost right off the bat. He wanted to say, “And have you been reading my philosophy books?” but he didn’t because Sabean had never struck him as that kind of guy. This must be a nightmare.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but we’re going to have to let you go,” said Bochy.

Zito turned his gaze to Righetti, his coach, and waited for the punchline. Righetti just stared back. Rags was never the guy to beat around the bush. Zito could see it in his eyes that this was over.

And this was just too much to take. “Are you fucking kidding me?” _Do you realize how much you owe me?_

What happened next was kind of a blur. He’s placated, he’s embarrassed, he’s sent on his way with a phone number for someone who’s supposed to be helping him get back to California. Like he couldn’t figure that out on his own? Like he hadn’t done that for his entire life up to that point?

\---

He steps down into the dugout, into the shade, and his eyes take a moment to adjust. This is a new feeling for him, still, even though he’s been playing sixth starter/longman for a month now. This is his first foray into the dugout this game, his innings spent in the bullpen with the kinds of pitchers he never really understood. And now, now he’s one of those guys. Fitting, because he never really understood himself, either.

He kind of stumbles onto the bench. There’s all sorts of detritus on the floor of the dugout, none of which he put there or had the time to catalogue when the guys were hitting. He feels slightly unsettled and attributes his baffled sense of being to the heat in Texas.

This is exhausting, he thinks, blinking up blearily at a fuzzy form in front of him, a dark shade against the bright Texas sun. A cup of water materializes in front of him and the fuzzy form takes its place on the bench beside him.

“Fucking weird, man,” says the only long-familiar voice in Oakland outside of the front office and their pitching coach.

“How the fuck did you pitch here for a year?” Zito breathes, dumping the cup of water on his head.

“Not well, and you were supposed to drink that, asshole.”

“It’s not like you slaved over a hot stove all day to make that for me.” Zito throws a smirk at Harden. “What’s ‘fucking weird’?”

Harden shrugs, resting his arm on the rail behind Zito’s back. “You. Being here.”

“Texas?”

Harden laughs. “No, with us.” Harden touches his shoulder. “You forget you’ve done this before?”

“Put that out of my mind and experience, clearly.” He sighs. “I’m getting old.”

Harden just pats him on the back, lets his hand linger. “Yeah, well. Aren’t we all.”

\---

He ended up in front of his locker in the visitor’s clubhouse and that was when everything clicked into place. No one was there yet; they’d called him in early so he could be out before the team came in. Spare him some embarrassment, he guessed, but that ship sailed when he calculated how much was left on his contract and digested the reality that they would rather pay him not to play for them. Barry contemplated hanging around a little longer just to fuck with his (former) bosses, but anger got the best of him and he started packing up the few personal items he’d stored in the locker.

The clubhouse door swung open and clanged shut behind someone just as Barry had gotten all of his things packed in the orange and black duffel the team had issued him what seemed like a decade ago. He looked up to see Tim Lincecum stroll into the room in sweats and a hoodie, a Red Bull cap pulled down low and his sunglasses still on his face. The ace was startled.

“Oh, hey. Didn’t think anyone would be in this early.”

Tim looked guilty, and Barry could see the problem in the way he was holding himself. (He had a lot of experience with broken teammates hiding injuries, especially pitchers.) There’s a special sort of guarding going on with Tim. It’s clear that he hadn’t done this before. “Going to see the trainer?”

Even without being able to see his eyes, Barry knew he’d caught him. “Uh, no. Just uh, going to lift a little.” Fucking awful liar.

Zito waved his hand. “No, whatever. It’s okay. I’m outta here.”

Tim pulled the sunglasses from his eyes. “Wait, what?”

He shrugged. “Just got released. Abysmal April, that kind of thing.”

“Holy shit, are you fucking kidding me?”

Zito didn’t answer after hearing his own words echoed back at him, just stood there kind of awkwardly as Tim digested the news. The ace is the one guy on the team Barry could have gone without seeing one last time. Karma is kind of a bitch sometimes. He thought, fuck it, and strode close, got Tim’s shoulders under his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“One for the road, yeah?”

Tim started to shake his head, but Barry took the kiss anyway. He got a hard press of his lips against Tim’s before he was pushed away. “What the fuck, you can’t just do that anymore.” Barry pulled Tim to his chest anyway, didn’t let him go when he half-heartedly struggled against him. “You fucker, I can’t believe you’re leaving me.” His voice was muffled against Barry’s shirt.

 _Again_ was left unsaid, but Zito heard it anyway.

“It’s not my choice.”

“This time.”

Zito sighed, released his hold on Tim. “I’ll be around when you guys get back from the road, probably. I mean, who’d want me for even league minimum, right?”

Tim stepped back and shoved his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. “Any team would be lucky to have you,” he recites, what anyone would say and has said since the beginning of professional baseball. It hurt more than it should.

“Sure, thanks. See ya ‘round.”

\---

\---

They’d ended things awhile ago, before the World Series. It was what it was, convenient and risky and everything that’d gotten Zito off before. It’d been more for Tim, turns out, and Zito feels a little bad about that still, but there’s really nothing he can do about it now.

Then he’d been left off the roster, his dad had gotten sick, and he’d met Amber.

And then, you know. There was … that.

\---

\---

His first call was to Scott. “You’re fired,” he said to the voicemail (He’s fucking screening my calls), not bothering to identify himself. His second was to Amber, and she hung up on him after saying, “What part of ‘don’t ever talk to me again’ do you not understand?”

He felt brave, so he made one more call. Another voicemail, but Barry can’t recall a time he’d ever spoken to the man on the phone anyway.

“Yeah, Billy? I’m available. Call me.”


End file.
